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| Jean-Baptiste Corneille Angel appearing to St Roch ca. 1685 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"At the beginning of the modern era, in Ignatius's century, one fact seems to begin to modify the exercise of the imagination: a reordering of the hierarchy of the five senses. In the Middle Ages, historians tell us, the most refined sense, the perceptive sense par excellence, the one that established the richest contact with the world, was hearing: sight came in only third place, after touch. Then we have a reversal: the eye becomes the prime organ of perception (Baroque, art of the thing seen, attests to it). This change is of great religious importance. The primacy of hearing, still very prevalent in the sixteenth century, was theologically guaranteed: the Church bases its authority on the word, faith is hearing: auditum verbi Dei, id est fidem; the ear, the ear alone, Luther said, is the Christian organ. Thus a risk of a contradiction arises between the new perception, led by sight, and the ancient faith based on hearing."
– from Sade, Fourier, Loyola by Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Miller (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976)
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| Eustache Le Sueur Archangel Raphael departing from Tobit's family ca. 1645-47 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Eustache Le Sueur Head of a Youth ca. 1645 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Eustache Le Sueur Presentation of the Virgin ca. 1641 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Claude Vignon European Sibyl ca. 1635 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| François Boitard Apollo and Nymphs ca. 1690-1715 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Sébastien Bourdon Venus and Aeneas ca. 1658-62 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Sébastien Bourdon Death of Dido ca. 1637-40 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| François de Nomé Architectural Capriccio ca. 1630 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Jacques Callot Battle of Cavalrymen ca. 1618 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jacques Callot Entrance of M. de Couvonge et M. de Chalabre (court ballet) ca. 1627 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jacques Callot Soldier with shield and sword ca. 1617 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Gilles-Marie Oppenordt Design for Fountain with Dolphin and Dragon before 1741 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jacques Blanchard St Cecilia before 1638 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| workshop of Simon Vouet Venus and Adonis ca. 1638 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Venus and Adonis as bracelet slide (after Simon Vouet) 17th century enamel on gold British Museum |